Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (12 page)

"There! How's that?" "Facing the house?"

"Sure, facing the house! Who wants to chase a lost ball in those woods the other side of the lane? That's Charleston College's research station, fence and all. Land a ball in there, Camilla, it'd take a police posse to get it back again."

"But—
facing
the house? What if
you break a window?"

Yancey replied by addressing Madge.

"If I bust a window, honey, I'll replace it with stained glass of the kind you were talkin' about. And an image of you in the window, like the angel you never were. How's that?"

Madge said nothing. Rip, putting down catcher's mitt and mask beside Alan, drew the fielder's glove on his left hand and paced off the distance to an imaginary pitcher's box.

"There'll be no windows broken, Madge! He won't get a sniff of the ball, he won't even
see
it, with Old Smoke Hillboro on the mound for the Yankees. What's the good word, Stonewall? Like to cover a little side-bet?"

"I'll cover any damn bet you want to make! But I'm gettin'
God-damn
sick and tired of—"

"Easy, you two!" yelled the umpire. "If you've got to fight the Civil War all over again, for Pete's sake do it on your own time!"

Out from the house, opening the white-painted screen door and letting it slam, came Dr. Gideon Fell. Hatless, in his black alpaca suit and leaning on the crutch-headed stick, he lumbered down the steps and blinked his way towards them. It was unnecessary to introduce Dr. Fell; everybody knew who he was, and accepted him from the start. Yet his presence, if anything, added to a tension that already existed.

"Alan," said Camilla, "what are
you
doing?"

"Only taking off my coat. Forgive the suspenders."

"That's a Savile Row suit, isn't it? Don't they make English suits for belts?"

"Yes, of course, but this particular tailor won't make 'em."

"What are you doing with the coat?" "Putting it down over here, that's all. I can't—" "On that wet grass? Don't be silly! Here, give it to me and I'll hold it for you."

"Thanks."

Leaving the mask where it was, Alan pulled the big glove on his left hand and moved behind the improvised plate.

"I can't give you signals," he called to Rip, "because
I
don't know what you throw. Like to warm up?"

"Look, Grantham, I'm always warmed up! However! Just to show 'em this damnyankee knows his stuff, I'll give you one strike and warm the plate. Stand back for a second, Stonewall! Ready, Grantham?"

"Fire away."

There was no elaborate wind-up, as Alan had expected. Rip's motions were very easy. Weight on the left foot, ball cradled close, he flung forward and uncorked his fast one.

It
was
a fast one. The ball blistered across the plate and whacked into the glove six inches above waist height. Alan, who had not touched a baseball in years, almost fumbled it. But you don't forget, he was thinking, any more than you forget how to ride a bicycle. He threw back to the pitcher. Picking up the mask, he adjusted its elastic over his head and crouched behind the plate.

"All right!" proclaimed the umpire. "Now will you guys quit stalling and get with it? Play ball!"

What sun remained was well behind Maynard Hall; they had no trouble with the light. Dr. Fell withdrew to the right of the path, the two girls to the left. Yancey advanced negligently, bat waggling.

"If he
does
break a window—!" Madge burst out.

"He won't, Madge; didn't I tell you?"

"I hope my father doesn't see it happen! I hope—"

"Play ball!"

Down came the pitch, a whistling duplicate of the first Yancey's bat did not move. The umpire's arm did. "Str-rike one!"

"Like it, Stonewall?" carolled Rip. "Just because you were a hot-shot hitter at some
parvenu
school like William and Mary . . . !"

"Parvenu
school, for God's sake?" echoed a hollow voice.
"Parvenu
school, burn my britches to a cinder! Son, they were learnin' their letters at William and Mary a hundred years before
your
damn place was hacked out of the wilderne
ss it ought to have stayed in. I’
m tellin' you—"

"I'm not telling you, Stonewall; I'm just showing you. See?"

Down it came: very fast, but high and inside. Alan did fumble this one; the mask seemed to provide a more restricted view than he remembered, and his own throw back was so high Rip had to jump for it. The next pitch, a slow curve with a wide break outwards, was also called a ball.

"What's the matter, Stonewall? Won't try for anything, eh? Bat stuck to your shoulder, or what?"

"Put it
here,
son! Just put it
here!"

This time indulging in an embryonic wind-up, Rip fired with every ounce of weight—a pitch so debatable, a little high and inside but perhaps below the shoulder, that Alan himself would hardly have known what to call it

"Ball—three!"

Rip straightened up on receiving the throw, his face not pleasant.

"How's your eyesight, umpire? Wouldn't it be better to get some pencils and a tin cup?"

"Want me to slap a fine on you?" howled the irate umpire, doing a little dance behind Alan. "Now shut your God-damn mouth and play ball!"

"I'll do that, Bob. We'll get you a seeing-eye dog when this is over. Meanwhile, though . . ."

By the look on the pitcher's face Alan guessed what it would be: Rip's fast one again, dead in the groove. The ball thudded into the glove exactly where he was holding his hands.

"Strike—two!"

Rip's spirits bubbled up.

"See that, Madge? I thought I could get him with my fast one again, and I was right. He won't swing at anything; he's too afraid of missing! Now what shall we feed him for the third strike? Something different, maybe?" Rip settled the weight on his left foot. "Always keep 'em guessing, that's the thing. Always . . ."

"Camilla," Madge burst out, "I don't like this!"

"It's all right, dear. There's nothing wrong."

"There
is
something wrong! I know! I can—"

Crack!

Yancey had stepped into the fast one and swung.

"Jesus H. Christ!" whispered the umpire.

In actual play it would have been a line drive over second base, too high to be speared or knocked down. The ball, a white streak like unwinding yarn, whistled straight between the two inner columns of the portico just as Henry Maynard, a book in his left hand, pushed open the screen door and emerged in its path.

It could not have hit him—it was far too high—but he would scarcely have known that. He dropped flat on his face, not at all a ludicrous spectacle to those who watched. The ball whacked against brick a foot or two above the front door, and rebounded out into the drive, where Rip Hillboro danced to field it. Henry Maynard picked himself up, briefly brushed at his knees, gave them all one look from a distance, and with much dignity went back into the house.

Rip hastened to join the others, pushing the ball into his hip pocket.

"That's the end of the exercise, I think. If we don't want thunders from Sinai, we'd better knock it off here and now. You know, Stonewall, maybe it's a good thing you and I are both leaving tomorrow."

"Yes, son, I guess it is too."

"Look, Stonewall, here's your dough: a ten and two fives. You made a fool of me, all right; I don't like it one bit. But you smacked that last one fair and square; you made a fool of me with all my talk, and I admit it! Here's the dough."

"Well . . . now!" said Yancey Beale. "I didn't much want your money, son. Up to this minute I meant to tell you just where you could shove it. Still! If you're bein' a good sport, that's different. Reckon I said thing
s I
oughtn't to have said, and maybe that clout was mostly fluke. Shake hands?"

"Sure; why not? We can be civilized again, can't we?"

Rip and Yancey, together with Dr. Fell, Bob Crandall, and Madge too, moved towards the house. Alan removed mask and glove and approached Camilla, who stood motionless with his coat over her arm.

"Alan—!"

"Yes?"

Camilla's face had grown rather flushed, and there was an odd look about her eyes. For an instant she seemed quite literally to sway towards him. Then the impression was gone, a burst bubble or an illusion.

"What a lot of
children!"
she said. "You know, Alan, it's really too bad about the hit that. . . that . . ."

"That almost beaned Madge's old man?"

"Yes. When Yancey hit that ball, I was looking at Dr. Fell's face and at Bob Crandall's too."

"What about it?"

"They were both hoping he
would
break a window." Camilla made a gesture of despair. "Oh, God save us!
Men!"

In silence Camilla and Alan followed the little procession up the steps, across the porch, and into the main hall. Putting down mask and glove on the table, where Rip had put his own glove and Yancey the bat, Alan took his coat from Camilla. There was no sign of Henry Maynard, for which he felt profoundly grateful.

"Honeychile," Yancey exclaimed to Madge, "where's your daddy?"

"If you ask me, he's up in his study doing a little sulking. Yancey, wait! Where are you going?"

"That salver thing we were using for home plate: I left it out in the sand! And he's as mad as a hornet already! I'll just—"

"No, let it be! George will bring it in!"

"Yes, Stonewall," advised Rip Hillboro, "you let it be.
I've
got something to say."

A subdued Rip, who had made handsome apology, clearly could not remain subdued. He had reared up again. His fair hair in a crew-cut seemed only a knife-edge of hair.

"Just before we went out there," he said, "I started to ask a question. And I'll ask it now come hell or high water. Follow me."

This time the procession poured after him down into the library, Dr. Fell bringing up the rear. Rip assumed a commanding position in the middle of the room.

"A remark was made—in what context I don't know and can't say; the Oracle of Goliath wouldn't tell me— that somebody has been acting suspiciously. Here's my question, ladies and gentlemen, and I think we'll all be interested in the answer." Dramatically he stabbed a finger towards the door on the right of the fireplace. "Which of you stole the tomahawk out of that room?"

7

A lightning-bolt just outside the windows could have produced no greater effect.

"Tomahawk?" blurted Madge.

"No!" Camilla whispered. "No, no, no!

"Somebody acting suspiciously?" she continued to Rip. "You heard something when you came in here with Yancey. But it wasn't what you think you heard."

"Wasn't it?"

"Mr. Crandall was telling us about a girl from Jersey City. Madge's father is suspicious of the stories he tells and the language, he-uses, always afraid he'll come out with something dreadful—"

"—which he often does, let's face it," concurred Mr. Crandall, addressing Dr. Fell. "Maybe I'm out of place in good society. My father was a cabinet-maker; he apprenticed me to a cabinet-maker when I was fifteen years old. But I didn't stay apprenticed; there was too much printer's ink in my veins. I'm a crude kind of fellow,
au fond,
though I've picked up a good deal over the years. I can be very refined when I want to be. When it's absolutely necessary, I can be as refined as all getout! You see—"

"Not," Camilla interrupted, "that there hasn't been suspicious behavior, everywhere and all the time. Considering what happened at half-past one this morning, when Madge saw a man on the beach
..."
Rapidly she recounted Madge's story, to the cross-eyed absorption of Dr. Fell. "And now, to top everything else . . . !"

Madge herself, lost in some unhappy dream, did not seem to be listening. She ran across to the open door of the other room, which remained dark, and groped just inside for a switch. Light glowed from a crystal chandelier. The others followed Madge inside.